This will be the 3rd year of GrSD, and while many local subreddits had awesome service events, organizing volunteer events for large groups of people is really hard. There just weren’t enough events to match the interest from local users. So this year, we’ve partnered with the Imagination Foundation so that local organizers can plug into their Global Cardboard Challenge events.

reddit users then helped the Caine’s Arcade video go viral, which helped raise over $239,000 for Caine’s College Fund and inspired kids to start making their own cardboard arcades. Parents and educators started sharing pictures, and a few days later a non-profit to foster creativity in more kids like Caine was started. This became the Imagination Foundation, whose goal is to foster and support creativity for kids throughout the world, and the Global Cardboard Challenge was their first program.

While the event is simple, it really helps grow the creative confidence of the kids who take part. Educators are using the challenge to create a fun and engaging curriculum, and local organizers have used it to raise tens-of-thousands of dollars for various causes. They are also partnering with National Headstart to introduce 30,000 pre-school kids to STEM, largely in underserved communities.

One of the things we love about this event is that it can be as big or as little as you want it to be – whether your reddit meetup group is huge, or just a few people, you’ll be able to plug into and volunteer at an excellent, pre-organized event in almost every city around the world. If you want to organize your own park clean-up, animal shelter refurbishing, or other volunteer event that is awesome, but now you also have a fun and meaningful option to “help kids all over the world to build something amazing out of cardboard, recycled materials and imagination” on October 11th.